AM Inspiration

The Shul Without a Clock.. The Room Without a Mirror... My room does not have a mirror. Its strange. I have always had a mirror. My room at home has huge mirror, almost the size of the whole wall. I even bought a mirror for my new apartment. But last Thursday, it fell off the wall. That's right, my $4 mirror from Target which I so lovingly picked for my room..it matched my linen and everything..shattered! It got sent out with the banana peels and egg shells. My life has been a whirlwind since moving. new state. new mode of transport ( no car for me here). I have to make my own lunch and dinner. If I don't buy groceries there is no food. no clean clothes if i don't do laundry. The earthquake, the hurricane..the weirdos on the subway..its cultural overload. It mostly has been OK. I'm taking it day my day. BH, so far so good. but then that darn mirror had to go and fall. There is some debate among my dearest and nearest whether I am girly or not. But despite all...

I never worked really hard in elementary, middle or high school. I did well..I just didn't have to work hard B"H. I loved reading, math came naturally. My only subject that I had any difficulty was English. I blame that on the fact that I have immigrant parents and no one ever corrected my essays for me. :P College obviously required that I up my game a little. I'm pretty sure PA school is gonna kick my behind if I don't get my act together and start studying in advance. My sister is different. She is vastly talented in other areas. School is a four letter word in her vocabulary. She does not enjoy any of it. She doesn't like being involved in school events, does not like most of the classes. It frankly stresses her out. She cannot fathom why I would read for leisure. "its ridiculous-its called summer VACATION  for a reason!' Reading is enjoyable for me. It is not difficult. For her, it takes considerable effort. She reads one chapter, look...

Thanks to Feisty for the link. today we mourned a physical loss but we also need to mourn the spiritual loss that is never ending. We are going through the worst spiritual holocaust the world has ever see. http://www.wejew.com/media/367/From_the_Ashes/ we need to act. we need to think. we  need to spread the word.

Tonight is the night. The saddest night of the year. Three weeks of progressively deeper levels of mourning culminate tonight. The night if T'sha B'av. We will sit on the floor and listen to Eicha being read. We will sit in darkness without smiling to our friends. Tonight we cry for we are sitting in a house of mourning. We are grieving the loss of something great. We are bemoaning the galus that we are on. The Galut that we perpetuate every year for the lack of ahavat chinam. We mourn the galut that the shechina is in, the loss of spirituality that has engulfed the world. We mourn the loss of the jewish souls, the assimilation rate that grows higher and higher every year. The loss is great, the sadness palpable, yet for some reason the tears don't come. We're told that this is the saddest day of the year. This is the day we mourn for all the tragedies that ever were bestowed upon Klal Yisrael. This is the day to cry. However, try as we might the tears don't come...

So here is the chiddush I learned this Shabbat. It was really exciting So we all know that the first Beit Hamikdash was destroyed because we transgressed the three cardinal sins; adultery, idolatry, and murder. The second was destroyed due to sinat chinam. That's not the chiddush, If you think about it for a moment. Does it make sense? We served idols, had affairs and murdered..Hashem forgave us and gave us the Beit Hamikdash 70 years later, but Sinat Chinam.. thats what is keeping us in Galut?!! If you think about it it really doesn't make any sense. So here's the chiddush. Sinat Chinam is typically translated as baseless hatred, which I always thought meant not liking someone for no reason. We all have that one person that rubs us the wrong way. You cannot point your finger on it, they never did anything to you but you just don't like them. That's what I always thought was sinat chinam.  This caused me endless grief because here i was guilty of the exact reas...

So I dont't usually make it to shul until the afternoon. But this week, my father insisted on me coming early to hear the Rav's Sermon; he was going to be talking about Leiby Z'"L. I've avoided talking about it while the blogging world was all aflame about it. I wanted to wait. The truth is there is really nothing to say. There are no explanations we can make. If we do, that is just insulting to his memory and insulting to G-d. Who do we think we are trying to understand the "mind" of the Creator of the world, who Was, Is and Always Will Be, who "sees" past, present, and future simultaneously? But as humans we need to understand. We have to be able to make it tangible. We need to be able to wrap our heads around it, try to make some sense of it. The alternative is too scary. So we give reasons. With the Itamar Massacre, people tried to make excuses. With the expulsion of Gush Katif, we gave reasons. With the Holocaust even, we had reasons. B...